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Boeing aims to finish 787 flight tests this weekend

The exterior is shown during the reveal of the first Boeing 787 destined for use by launch customer All Nippon Airways. (JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM) | Click image for photo gallery.

Boeing has 24 hours of flight testing left on the 787 Dreamliner and hopes to finish that this weekend, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Albaugh said Thursday.

The Federal Aviation Administration should hold a type certification review board meeting next week, followed by certification and delivery of the first 787 to launch customer All Nippon Airways by the end of September, he said at the webcast Jefferies 2011 Global Industrial and A&D Conference in New York.

Boeing is three years late delivering the first 787. After first delivery, the biggest challenge will be ramping up production to the 10-a-month rate the company plans to reach by late 2013.
“I think we understand how to come up in rate,” Albaugh said. “Our supply chain is ready to go up in rate.”

The biggest “pinch point” is the former Vought Aircraft Industries and Global Aeronautica facilities in North Charleston, S.C., which were so problematic that Boeing bought them, he said. “We can do what needs to be done for them to be able to support the rate increases.”

The other new airplane Boeing plans to deliver in September is the 747-8 Freighter, followed next year by the 747-8 Intercontinental, which is the passenger version of the stretched 747.

Boeing has orders for 114 747-8s, with commitments it will announce “in the near future” for 22 more, Albaugh said. “We think once it enters into service we’re going to have a lot of interest from a lot of airlines.”

Boeing has seen much more interest this year for the 777, with net orders for 98 of its largest twin-engine wide-body, including seven added Thursday for an unidentified customer or customers.

“We are talking to half a dozen airlines right now, not just about the 777 but the 777x,” Albaugh said, referring to a planned upgraded version of the airplane.

Boeing just announced that it will upgrade its 737 with new, more-efficient engines, rather than replacing the single-aisle airplane.

“As an engineer I really wanted to do a new small airplane, and the technology existed to do it,” Albaugh said. “I think we could have built an airplane that would have been more than 20 percent more efficient than the 737NG” (rather than the 10 to 12 percent gain expected from the re-engined aircraft).

But Boeing executives didn’t know what the production system would look like to produce 50 or 60 composite airplanes a month and waiting for those answers would have pushed first delivery to 2021 or 2022, around two years later than hoped, Albaugh said. He noted that customers wanted date certainty, new more-efficient airplanes as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the company is continuing to work on a new small airplane, Albaugh said.

With the 787, “we had not matured some of the technologies as much as we should have,” he noted. “Our plan right now, and we’re spending money on it, is to really focus on those key technologies necessary and the production system necessary to do that new airplane.”

Executives still aren’t sure if it will replace the 737 or be larger, in the 757 to 767 range, he added. “Some time in the following decade we will do a new airplane.”

Finally, Albaugh said he wants to whittle down Boeing’s backlog, which stands at 3,432 airplanes, including 2,146 737s.

“To me a seven-year backlog is too much,” he said.

Boeing plans to boost 737 production from the current rate of 31.5 a month to 35 early next year, 38 in the second quarter of 2013 and 42 in the first half of 2014, and envisions building 50 to 60 a month by the end of the decade. The company boosted 777 production from five to seven a month this year and plans to go to 8.3 a month in the first quarter of 2013.

Albaugh said he would not be surprised to if Boeing booked orders this year for more airplanes than it delivers but wants a couple of years when the opposite is true, “so I can respond to a customer in two to three years, rather than seven years.”

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.